Elizabeth did not at once rejoin her friends. Instead, she sank on to the low settee close to where she had been standing, and drew Tavernake down to her side. She waved her hand across at the others, who were calling for her.
“In a moment, dear people,” she said.
Then she leaned back among the cushions and laughed at her companion.
“Tell me, Mr. Tavernake,” she asked, “don't you feel that you have stepped into a sort of modern Arabian Nights?”
“Why?”
“Oh, I know Mr. Pritchard's weakness,” she continued. “He loves to throw a glamour around everything he says or does. Because he honors me by interesting himself in my concerns, he has probably told you all sorts of wonderful things about me and my friends. A very ingenious romancer, Mr. Pritchard, you know. Confess, now, didn't he tell you some stories about us?”
She might have spared herself the trouble of beating about the bush. There was no hesitation about Tavernake.
“He said that your friends were every one of them criminals,” Tavernake declared, “and he admitted that he was working hard at the present moment to discover that you were one, too.”
She laughed softly but heartily.
“I wonder what was his object,” she remarked, “in taking you into his confidence.”
“He happened to know,” Tavernake explained, “that I was intimate with your sister. He wanted me to ask Beatrice a certain question.”
Elizabeth laughed no more. She looked steadfastly into his eyes.
“And that question?”
“He wanted me to ask Beatrice why she left you and hid herself in London.”
She tried to smile but not very successfully.
“According to his story,” Tavernake continued, “you and Beatrice and your husband were away together somewhere in the country. Something happened there, something which resulted in the disappearance of your husband. Beatrice came back alone and has not been near you since. Soon afterwards, you, too, came back alone. Mr. Gardner has not been seen or heard of.”
Elizabeth was bending over her dog, but even Tavernake, unobservant though he was, could see that she was shaken.
“Pritchard is a clever man, generally,” she remarked, “diabolically clever. Why has he told you all this, I wonder? He must have known that you would probably repeat it to me. Why does he want to show me his hand?”
“I have no idea,” Tavernake replied. “These matters are all beyond me. They do not concern me in any way. I am not keeping you from your friends? Please send me away when you like.”
“Don't go just yet,” she begged. “Sit with me for a moment. Can't you see,” she added, whispering, “that I have had a shock? Sit with me. I can't go back to those others just yet.”
Tavernake did as he was bidden. The woman at his side was still caressing the little animal she carried. Watching her, however, Tavernake could see that her bosom was rising and falling quickly. There was an unnatural pallor in her cheeks, a terrified gleam in her eyes. Nevertheless, these things passed. In a very few seconds she was herself again.
“Come,” she said, “it is not often that I give way. The only time I am ever afraid is when there is something which I do not understand. I do not understand Mr. Pritchard to-night. I know that he is my enemy. I cannot imagine why he should talk to you. He must have known that you would repeat all he said. It is not like him. Tell me, Mr. Tavernake, you have heard all sorts of things about me. Do you believe them? Do you believe—it's rather a horrible thing to ask, isn't it?” she went on hurriedly,—“do you believe that I made away with my husband?”
“You surely do not need to ask me that question,” Tavernake answered, fervently. “I should believe your word, whatever you told me. I should not believe that you could do anything wrong.”
Her hand touched his for a moment and he was repaid.
“Don't think too well of me,” she begged. “I don't want to disappoint you.”
Some one pushed open the swing doors and she started nervously. It was only a waiter who passed through into the bar.
“What I think of you,” Tavernake said slowly, “nothing could alter, but because I am stupid, I suppose, there is quite a good deal that I cannot understand. I cannot understand, for instance, why they should suspect you of having anything to do with your husband's disappearance. You can prove where you were when he left you?”
“Quite easily,” she answered, “only, unfortunately, no one seems to have seen him go. He timed his departure so cunningly that he apparently vanished into thin air. Even then,” she continued, “but for one thing I don't suppose that any one would have had suspicions. I dare say Mr. Pritchard told you that before we left New York my husband sold out some of his property and brought it over to Europe with him in cash. We had both determined that we would live abroad and have nothing more to do with America. It was not I who persuaded him to do this. It made no difference to me. If he had run away and left me, the courts would have given me money. If he had died and I had been a widow, he would have left me his property. But simply because there was all this money in our hands, and because he disappeared, his people and this man Pritchard suspect me.”
“It is wicked,” he muttered.
She turned slowly towards him.
“Mr. Tavernake,” she said, “do you know that you can help me very much indeed?”
“I only wish I could,” he replied. “Try me.”
“Can't you see,” she went on, “that the great thing against me is that Beatrice left me suddenly when we were on that wretched expedition, and came back alone? She is in London, I know, quite close to me, and still she hides. Pritchard asks himself why. Mr. Tavernake, go and tell her what people are saying, go and tell her everything that has happened, let her understand that her keeping away is doing me a terrible injury, beg her to come and let people see that we are reconciled, and warn her, too, against Pritchard. Will you do this for me?”
“Of course I will,” Tavernake answered. “I will see her to-morrow.”
Elizabeth drew a little sigh of relief.
“And you'll let me know what she says?” she asked, rising.
“I shall be only too glad to,” Tavernake assured her.
“Good-night!”
She looked up into his face with a smile which had turned the heads of hardened stagers in New York. No wonder that Tavernake felt his heart beat against his ribs! He took her hands and held them for a moment. Then he turned abruptly away.
“Good-night!” he said.
He disappeared through the swing doors. She strolled across the room to where her friends were sitting in a circle, laughing and talking. Her father, who had just come in and joined them, gripped her by the arm as she sat down.
“What does it mean?” he demanded, with shaking voice. “Did you see that he was there with Pritchard—your young man—that wretched estate agent's clerk? I tell you that Pritchard was pumping him for all he was worth.”
“My dear father,” she whispered, coldly, “don't be melodramatic. You give yourself away the whole time. Go to bed if you can't behave like a man.”
The lights had been turned low, there was no one else in the room. The little old gentleman with the eyeglass leaned forward.
“Have you any notion, my dear Elizabeth,” he asked, “why our friend Pritchard is so much in evidence just at present?”
“Not on account of you, Jimmy,” she answered, “nor of any one else here, in fact. The truth is he has conceived a violent admiration for me—an admiration so pronounced, indeed, that he hates to let me out of his sight.”
They all laughed uproariously. Then Walter Crease, the journalist, leaned forward,—a man with a long, narrow face, yellow-stained fingers, and hollow cheekbones. He glanced around the room before he spoke, and his voice sounded like a hoarse whisper.
“See here,” he said, “seems to me Pritchard is getting mighty awkward. He hasn't got his posse around him in this country, anyway.”
There was a dead silence for several seconds. Then the little old gentleman nodded solemnly.
“I am a trifle tired of Pritchard myself,” he admitted, “and he certainly knows too much. He carries too much in his head to go around safely.”
The eyes of Elizabeth were bright.
“He treats us like children,” she declared. “To-night he has told the whole of my affairs to a perfect stranger. It is intolerable!”
The little party broke up soon after. Only Walter Crease and the man called Jimmy Post were left talking, and they retired into the window-seat, whispering together.
Tavernake, with his hands thrust deep in his overcoat pockets, left the hotel and strode along the Strand. Some fancy seized him before he had gone many paces, and turning abruptly to the left he descended to the Embankment. He made his way to the very seat upon which he had sat once before with Beatrice. With folded arms he leaned back in the corner, looking out across the river, at the curving line of lights, at the black, turgid waters, the slowly-moving hulk of a barge on its way down the stream. It was a new thing, this, for him to have to accuse himself of folly, of weakness. For the last few days he had moved in a mist of uncertainty, setting his heel upon all reflection, avoiding every issue. To-night he could escape those accusing thoughts no longer; to-night he was more than ever bitter with himself. What folly was this which had sprung up in his life—folly colossal, unimaginable, as unexpected as though it had fallen a thunderbolt from the skies! What had happened to change him so completely!
His thought traveled back to the boarding-house. It was there that the thing had begun. Before that night upon the roof, the finger-posts which he had set up with such care and deliberation along the road which led towards his coveted goal, had seemed to him to point with unfaltering directness towards everything in life worthy of consideration. To-night they were only dreary phantasms, marking time across a miserable plain. Perhaps, after all, there had been something in his nature, some rebel thing, intolerable yet to be reckoned with, which had been first born of that fateful curiosity of his. It had leapt up so suddenly, sprung with such scanty notice into strenuous and insistent life. Yet what place had it there? He must fight against it, root it out with both hands. What was this world of intrigue, this criminal, undesirable world, to him? His common sense forbade him altogether to dissociate Elizabeth from her friends, from her surroundings. She was the secret of the pain which was tearing at his heartstrings, of all the excitement, the joy, the passion which had swept like a full flood across the level way of his life, which had set him drifting among the unknown seas. Yet it was Beatrice who had brought this upon him. If she had never left, if he had not tasted the horrors of this new loneliness, he might have been able to struggle on. He missed her, missed her diabolically. The other things, marvelous though they were, had been more or less like a mirage. This world of new emotions had spread like a silken mesh over all his thoughts, over all his desires. Beatrice had been a tangible person, restful, delightful, a real companion, his one resource against this madness. And now she was gone, and he was powerless to get her back. He turned his head, he looked up the road along which he had torn that night with his arms around her. She owed him her life and she had gone! With all a man's inconsequence, it seemed to him as he rose heavily to his feet and started homeward, that she had repaid him with a certain amount of ingratitude, that she had left him at the one moment in his life when he needed her most.
The next afternoon, at half-past four, Tavernake was having tea with Beatrice in the tiny flat which she was sharing with another girl, off Kingsway. She opened the door to him herself, and though she chattered ceaselessly, it seemed to him that she was by no means at her ease. She installed him in the only available chair, an absurd little wicker thing many sizes too small for him, and seated herself upon the hearth-rug a few feet away.
“You have soon managed to find me out, Leonard,” she remarked.
“Yes,” he answered. “I had to go to the stage doorkeeper for your address.”
“He hadn't the slightest right to give it you,” she declared.
Tavernake shrugged his shoulders.
“I had to have it,” he said simply.
“The power of the purse again!” she laughed. “Now that you are here, I don't believe that you are a bit glad to see me. Are you?”
He did not answer for a moment. He was thinking of that vigil upon the Embankment, of the long walk home, of the battle with himself, the continual striving to tear from his heart this new thing, for which, with a curious and most masculine inconsistency, he persisted in holding her responsible.
“You know, Leonard,” she continued, getting up abruptly and beginning to make the tea, “I believe that you are angry with me. If you are, all I can say is that you are a very foolish person. I had to come away. Can't you see that?”
“I cannot,” he answered stolidly.
She sighed.
“You are not a reasonable person,” she declared. “I suppose it is because you have led such a queer life, and had no womenfolk to look after you. You don't understand. It was absurd, in a way, that I should ever have called myself your sister, that we should even have attempted such a ridiculous experiment. But after—after the other night—”
“Can't we forget that?” he interrupted.
She raised her eyes and looked at him.
“Can you?” she asked.
There was a curious, almost a pleading earnestness in her tone. Her eyes had something new to say, something which, though it failed to stir his blood, made him vaguely uncomfortable. Nevertheless, he answered her without hesitation.
“Yes,” he replied, “I could forget it. I will promise to forget it.”
It was unaccountable, but he almost fancied that he saw this new thing pass from her face, leaving her pale and tremulous. She looked away again and busied herself with the tea-caddy, but the fingers which held the spoon were shaking a little.
“Oh, I suppose I could forget,” she said, “but it would be very difficult for either of us to behave as though it had never happened. Besides, it really was an impossible situation, you know,” she went on, looking down into the tea-caddy. “It is much better for me to be here with Annie. You can come and see me now and then and we can still be very good friends.”
Tavernake was annoyed. He said nothing, and Beatrice, glancing up, laughed at his gloomy expression.
“You certainly are,” she declared, “the most impossible, the most primitive person I ever met. London isn't Arcadia, you know, and you are not my brother. Besides, you were such an autocrat. You didn't even like my going out to supper with Mr. Grier.”
“I hate the fellow!” Tavernake admitted. “Are you seeing much of him?”
“He took us all out to supper last night,” she replied. “I thought it was very kind of him to ask me.”
“Kind, indeed! Does he want to marry you?” Tavernake demanded.
She set down the teapot and again she laughed softly. In her plain black gown, very simple, adorned only by the little white bow at her neck, quakerlike and spotless, with the added color in her cheeks, too, which seemed to have come there during the last few moments, she was a very alluring person.
“He can't,” she declared. “He is married already.”
Then there came to Tavernake an inspiration, an inspiration so wonderful that he gripped the sides of his chair and sat up. Here, after all, was the way out for him, the way out from his garden of madness, the way to escape from that mysterious, paralyzing yoke whose burden was already heavy upon his shoulders. In that swift, vivid moment he saw something of the truth. He saw himself losing all his virility, the tool and plaything of this woman who had bewitched him, a poor, fond creature living only for the kind words and glances she might throw him at her pleasure. In those few seconds he knew the true from the false. Without hesitation, he gripped with all the colossal selfishness of his unthinking sex at the rope which was thrown to him.
“Well, then, I do,” he said firmly. “Will you marry me, Beatrice?”
She threw her head back and laughed, laughed long and softly, and Tavernake, simple and unversed in the ways of women, believed that she was indeed amused.
“Neither you nor any one else, dear Leonard!” she exclaimed.
“But I want you to,” he persisted. “I think that you will.”
There was coquetry now in the tantalizing look she flashed him.
“Am I, too, then, one of these things to be attained in your life?” she asked. “Dear Leonard, you mustn't say it like that. I don't like the look of your jaw. It frightens me.”
“There is nothing to be afraid of in marrying me,” he answered. “I should make you a very good husband. Some day you would be rich, very rich indeed. I am quite sure that I shall succeed, if not at once, very soon. There is plenty of money to be made in the world if one perseveres.”
She had the air of trying to take him seriously.
“You sound quite convincing,” she admitted, “but I do wish that you would put all these thoughts out of your mind, Leonard. It doesn't sound like you in the least. Remember what you told me that first night; you assured me that women had not the slightest part in your life.”
“I have changed,” he confessed. “I did not expect anything of the sort to happen, but it has. It would be foolish of me to deny it. I have been all my life learning, Beatrice,” he continued, with a sudden curious softness in his tone, “and yet, somehow or other, it seems to me that I never knew anything at all until lately. There was no one to direct me, no one to show me just what is worth while in life. You have taught me a great deal, you have taught me how little I know. And there are things,” he went on, solemnly, “of which I am afraid, things which I do not begin even to understand. Can't you see how it is with me? I am really very ignorant. I want some one who understands; I want you, Beatrice, very badly.”
She patted the back of his hand caressingly.
“You mustn't talk like that, Leonard,” she said. “I shouldn't make you a good wife. I am not going to marry any one.”
“And why?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“That is my secret,” she told him, looking into the fire.
“You mean to say that, you will never marry?” he persisted.
“Oh, I suppose I shall change, like other women,” she answered. “Just at present, I feel like that.”
“Is it because your sister's marriage—”
She caught hold of both his hands; her eyes were suddenly full of terror.
“You mustn't talk about Elizabeth,” she begged, “you please mustn't talk about her. Promise that you won't.”
“But I came here to talk about her,” he replied.
Beatrice, for a moment, said nothing. Then she threw down his hands and laughed once more. As she flung herself back in her place, it seemed to Tavernake that he saw once more the girl who had stood upon the roof of the boarding-house.
“You came to talk about Elizabeth!” she exclaimed. “I forgot. Well, go on, what is it?”
“Your sister is in trouble!”
“Are you her confidant?” Beatrice asked.
“I am not exactly that,” he admitted, “but she has asked me to come and see you.”
Beatrice had suddenly grown hard, her lips were set together, even her attitude was uncompromising.
“Say exactly what you have to say,” she told him. “I will not interrupt.”
“It sounds foolish,” Tavernake declared, “because I know so little, but it seems that your sister is being annoyed by a man named Pritchard, an American detective. She tells me that he suspects her of being concerned in some way with the disappearance of her husband. One of his reasons is that you left her abruptly and went into hiding, that you will not see or speak to her. She wishes you to be reconciled.”
“Is that all?” Beatrice asked.
“It is all,” he replied, “so long as you understand its significance. If you go to see your sister, or let her come to see you, this man Pritchard will have one of his causes for suspicion removed.”
“So you came as Elizabeth's ambassador,” Beatrice said, half as though to herself. “Well, here is my answer. I will not go to Elizabeth. If she finds out my whereabouts and comes here, then I shall go away again and hide. I shall never willingly exchange another word with her as long as I live.”
Tavernake looked at her doubtfully.
“But she is your sister!” he explained.
“She is my sister,” Beatrice repeated, “and yet what I have said to you I mean.”
There was a short silence. Tavernake felt unaccountably ill at ease. Something had sprung up between them which he did not understand. He was swift to recognize, however, the note of absolute finality in her tone.
“I have given my message,” he declared. “I shall tell her what you say. Perhaps I had better go now.”
He half rose to his feet. Suddenly she lost control of herself.
“Leonard, Leonard,” she cried, “don't you see that you are being very foolish indeed? You have been good to me. Let me try and repay it a little. Elizabeth is my sister, but listen! What I say to you now I say in deadly earnest. Elizabeth has no heart, she has no thought for other people, she makes use of them and they count for no more to her than the figures that pass through one's dreams. She has some sort of hateful gift,” Beatrice continued, and her voice shook and her eyes flashed, “some hateful gift of attracting people to her and making them do her bidding, of spoiling their lives and throwing them away when they have ceased to be useful. Leonard, you must not let her do this with you.”
He rose to his feet awkwardly. Very likely it was all true, and yet, what difference did it make?
“Thank you,” he said.
They stood, for a moment, hand in hand. Then they heard the sound of a key in the lock.
“Here's Annie coming back!” Beatrice exclaimed.
Tavernake was introduced to Miss Annie Legarde, who thought he was a very strange person indeed because he did not fit in with any of the types of men, young or old, of whom she knew anything. And as for Tavernake, he considered that Miss Annie Legarde would have looked at least as well in a hat half the size, and much better without the powder upon her face. Her clothes were obviously more expensive than Beatrice's, but they were put on with less care and taste.
Beatrice came out on to the landing with him.
“So you won't marry me, Beatrice?” he said, as she held out her hand.
She looked at him for a moment and then turned away with a faint sob, without even a word of farewell. He watched her disappear and heard the door shut. Slowly he began to descend the stone steps. There was something to him a little fateful about the closed door above, the long yet easy descent into the street.
At six o'clock that evening, Tavernake rang up the Milan Court and inquired for Elizabeth. There was a moment or two's delay and then he heard her reply. Even over the telephone wires, even though he stood, cramped and uncomfortable, in that stuffy little telephone booth, he felt the quick start of pleasure, the thrill of something different in life, which came to him always at the sound of her voice, at the slightest suggestion of her presence.
“Well, my friend, what fortune?” she asked him.
“None,” he answered. “I have done my best. Beatrice will not listen to me.”
“She will not come and see me?”
“She will not.”
Elizabeth was silent for a moment. When she spoke again, there was a change in her tone.
“You have failed, then.”
“I did everything that could be done,” Tavernake insisted eagerly. “I am quite sure that nothing anybody could say would move Beatrice. She is very decided indeed.”
“I have another idea,” Elizabeth remarked, after a brief pause. “She will not come to me; very well, I must go to her. You must take me there.”
“I cannot do that,” Tavernake answered.
“Why not?”
“Beatrice has refused absolutely to permit me to tell you or any one else of her whereabouts,” he declared. “Without her permission I cannot do it.”
“Do you mean that?” she asked.
“Of course,” he answered uncomfortably.
There was another silence. When she spoke again, her voice had changed for the second time. Tavernake felt his heart sink as he listened.
“Very well,” she said. “I thought that you were my friend, that you wished to help me.”
“I do,” he replied, “but you would not have me break my word?”
“You are breaking your word with me,” she told him.
“It is a different thing,” he insisted.
“You will not take me there?” she said once more.
“I cannot,” Tavernake answered.
“Very well, good-bye!”
“Don't go,” he begged. “Can't I see you somewhere for a few minutes this evening?”
“I am afraid not,” Elizabeth replied coolly.
“Are you going out?” he persisted.
“I am going to the Duke of York's Theatre with some friends,” she answered. “I am sorry. You have disappointed me.”
She rang off and he turned away from the telephone booth into the street. It seemed to him, as he walked down the crowded thoroughfare, that some reflection of his own self-contempt was visible in the countenances of the men and women who were hurrying past him. Wherever he looked, he was acutely conscious of it. In his heart he felt the bitter sense of shame of a man who wilfully succumbs to weakness. Yet that night he made his efforts.
For four hours he sat in his lonely rooms and worked. Then the unequal struggle was ended. With a groan he caught up his hat and coat and left the house. Half an hour later, he was among the little crowd of loiterers and footmen standing outside the doors of the Duke of York's Theatre.
It was still some time before the termination of the performance. As the slow minutes dragged by, he grew to hate himself, to hate this new thing in his life which had torn down his everyday standards, which had carried him off his feet in this strange and detestable fashion. It was a dormant sense, without a doubt, which Elizabeth had stirred into life—the sense of sex, quiescent in him so long, chiefly through his perfect physical sanity; perhaps, too, in some measure, from his half-starved imagination. It was significant, though, that once aroused it burned with surprising and unwavering fidelity. The whole world of women now were different creatures to him, but they left him as utterly unmoved as in his unawakened days. It was Elizabeth only he wanted, craved for fiercely, with all this late-born passion of mingled sentiment and desire. He felt himself, as he hung round there upon the pavement, rubbing shoulders with the liveried servants, the loafers, and the passers-by, a thing to be despised. He was like a whipped dog fawning back to his master. Yet if only he could persuade her to come with him, if it were but for an hour! If only she would sit opposite him in that wonderful little restaurant, where the lights and the music, the laughter and the wine, were all outward symbols of this new life from before which her fingers seemed to have torn aside the curtains! His heart beat with a fierce impatience. He watched the thin stream of people who left before the play was over, suburbanites mostly, in a hurry for their trains. Very soon the whole audience followed, commissionaires were busy with their whistles, the servants eagerly looking right and left for their masters. And then Elizabeth! She came out in the midst of half-a-dozen others, brilliant in a wonderful cloak and dress of turquoise blue, laughing with her friends, to all appearance the gayest of the party. Tavernake stepped quickly forward, but at that moment there was a crush and he could not advance. She passed within a yard of him, escorted by a couple of men, and for a moment their eyes met. She raised her eyebrows, as though in surprise, and her recognition was of the slightest. She passed on and entered a waiting motorcar, accompanied by the two men. Tavernake stood and looked after it. She did not even glance round. Except for that little gesture of cold surprise, she had ignored him. Tavernake, scarcely knowing what he did, turned slowly towards the Strand.
He was face to face now with a crisis before which he seemed powerless. Men were there in the world to be bullied, cajoled, or swept out of the way. What did one do with a woman who was kind one moment and insolent the next, who raised her eyebrows and passed on when he wanted her, when he was there longing for her? Those old solid dreams of his—wealth, power, his name on great prospectuses, a position in the world—these things now appeared like the day fancies of a child. He had seen his way towards them. Already he had felt his feet upon the rungs of the ladder which leads to material success. This was something different, something greater. Then a sense of despair chilled his heart. He felt how ignorant, how helpless he was. He had not even studied the first text-book of life. Those very qualities which had served him so well before were hopeless here. Persistence, Beatrice had told him once, only annoys a woman.
He came to a standstill outside the entrance to the Milan Court, and retraced his steps. The thought of Beatrice had brought something soothing with it. He felt that he must see her, see her at once. He walked back along the Strand and entered the restaurant where Beatrice and he had had their memorable supper. From the vestibule he could just see Grier's back as he stood talking to a waiter by the side of a round table in the middle of the room. Tavernake slowly withdrew and made his way upstairs. There were one or two little tables there in the balcony, hidden from the lower part of the room. He seated himself at one, handing his coat and hat mechanically to the waiter who came hurrying up.
“But, Monsieur,” the man explained, with a deprecating gesture, “these tables are all taken.”
Tavernake, who kept an account book in which he registered even his car fares, put five shillings in the man's hand.
“This one I will have,” he said, firmly, and sat down.
The man looked at him and turned aside to speak to the head waiter. They conversed together in whispers. Tavernake took no notice. His jaw was set. Himself unseen, he was gazing steadfastly at that table below. The head waiter shrugged his shoulders and departed; his other clients must be mollified. There was a finality which was unanswerable about Tavernake's methods.
Tavernake ate and drank what they brought to him, ate and drank and suffered. Everything was as it had been that other night—the popping of corks, the soft music, the laughter of women, the pleasant, luxurious sense of warmth and gayety pervading the whole place.
It was all just the same, but this time he sat outside and looked on. Beatrice was seated next Grier, and on her other side was a young man of the type which Tavernake detested, partly because it inspired him with a reluctant but insistent sense of inferiority. The young man was handsome, tall, and thin. His evening clothes fitted him perfectly, his studs and links were of the latest mode, his white tie arranged as though by the fingers of an artist. And yet he was no tailor's model. A gentleman, beyond a doubt, Tavernake decided, watching grudgingly the courteous movement of his head, listening sometimes to his well-bred but rather languid voice. Beatrice laughed often into his face. She admired him, of course. How could she help it! Grier sat at her other side. He, too, talked to her whenever he had the chance. It was a new fever which Tavernake was tasting, a new fever burning in his blood. He was jealous; he hated the whole party below. In imagination he saw Elizabeth with her friends, supping most likely in that other, more resplendent restaurant, only a few yards away. He imagined her the centre of every attention. Without a doubt, she was looking at her neighbor as she had looked at him. Tavernake bit his lip, frowning. If he had had it in his power, in those black moments, to have thrown a thunderbolt from his place, he would have wrecked every table in the room, he would have watched with joy the white, startled faces of the revelers as they fled away into the night. It was a new torture, indescribable, bitter. Indeed, this curiosity of his, of which he had spoken to Beatrice as they had walked together down Oxford Street on that first evening, was being satisfied with a vengeance! He was learning of those other things of life. He had sipped at the sweetness; he was drinking the bitters!
An altercation by his side distracted him. Again there was the head waiter and a protesting guest. Tavernake looked up and recognized Professor Franklin. With his broad-brimmed hat in his hand, the professor, in fluent phraseology and a strong American accent, was making himself decidedly disagreeable.
“You had better send for your manager right away, young man,” he declared. “On Tuesday night he brought me here himself and I engaged this table for the week. No, I tell you I won't have any other! I guess my order was good enough. You send for Luigi right here. You know who I am? Professor Franklin's my name, from New York, and if I say I mean to have a thing, I expect to get it.”
For the first time he recognized Tavernake, and paused for a moment in his speech.
“Have I got your table, Professor?” Tavernake asked, slowly.
“You have, sir,” the professor answered. “I did not recognize you when I came in or I would have addressed you personally. I have particular reasons for occupying a front table here every night this week.”
The thoughts began to crowd in upon Tavernake's brain. He hesitated.
“Why not sit down with me?” he suggested.
The professor acquiesced without a word. The head waiter, with a sigh of relief, took his hat and overcoat and accepted his order. Tavernake leaned across the table.
“Professor,” he said, “why do you insist upon sitting up here?”
The professor moved his head slowly downwards.
“My young friend, I speak to you in confidence?”
“In confidence,” Tavernake repeated.
“I come here secretly,” the professor continued, “because it is the only chance I have of seeing a very dear relative of mine. I am obliged to keep away from her just now, but from here I can watch, I can see that she is well.”
“You mean your daughter Beatrice,” Tavernake said, calmly.
The professor trembled all over.
“You know!” he muttered.
“Yes, I know,” Tavernake answered. “I have been able to be of some slight assistance to your daughter Beatrice.”
The professor grasped his hand.
“Yes, yes,” he said, “Elizabeth is very angry with you because you will not tell her where to find the little girl. You are right, Mr. Tavernake. You must never tell her.”
“I don't intend it,” Tavernake declared.
“Say, this is a great evening for me!” the professor went on, eagerly. “I found out by accident myself. I was at the bar and I saw her come in with a lot of others.”
“Why don't you go and speak to her?” Tavernake asked.
The professor shivered.
“There has been a disagreement,” he explained. “Beatrice and Elizabeth have quarreled. Mind you, Beatrice was right.”
“Then why don't you go to her instead of staying with Elizabeth?” Tavernake demanded, bluntly.
The professor temporarily collapsed. He drank heavily of the whiskey and soda by his side, and answered gloomily.
“My young friend,” he said, “Beatrice, when she left us, was penniless. Mind you, Elizabeth is the one with brains. It is Elizabeth who has the money. She has a strong will, too. She keeps me there whether I will or not, she makes me do many things—many things, surely—which I hate. But Elizabeth has her way. If I had gone with Beatrice, if I were to go to her now, I should be only a burden upon her.”
“You have no money, then?” Tavernake remarked.
The professor shook his head sadly.
“Speculations, my young friend,” he replied, “speculations undertaken solely with the object of making a fortune for my children. I have had money and lost it.”
“Can't you earn any?” Tavernake asked. “Beatrice doesn't seem extravagant.”
The professor regarded this outspoken young man with an air of hurt dignity.
“If you will forgive me,” he said. “I think that we will choose another subject of conversation.”
“At any rate,” Tavernake declared, “you must be fond of your daughter or you would not come here night after night just to look at her.”
The professor shook out a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his eyes.
“Beatrice was always my favorite,” he announced solemnly, “but Elizabeth—well, you can't get away from Elizabeth,” he added, leaning across the table. “To tell you the truth, Mr. Tavernake, Elizabeth terrifies me sometimes, she is so bold. I am afraid where her scheming may land us. I would be happier with Beatrice if only she had the means to satisfy my trifling wants.”
He turned to the waiter and ordered a pint of champagne.
“Veuve Clicquot '99,” he instructed the man. “At my age,” he remarked, with a sigh, “one has to be careful about these little matters. The wrong brand of champagne means a sleepless night.”
Tavernake looked at him in a puzzled way. The professor was a riddle to him. He represented no type which had come within the orbit of his experience. With the arrival of the champagne, the professor became almost eloquent. He leaned forward, gazing stealthily down at the round table.
“If I could tell you of that girl's mother, Mr. Tavernake,” he said, “if I could tell you what her history, our history, has been, it would seem to you so strange that you would probably regard me as a romancer. No, we have to carry our secrets with us.”
“By-the-bye,” Tavernake asked, “what are you a professor of?”
“Of the hidden sciences, sir,” was the immediate reply. “Phrenology was my earliest love. Since then I have studied in the East; I have spent many years in a monastery in China. I have gratified in every way my natural love of the occult. I represent today those people of advanced thought who have traveled, even in spirit, for ever such a little distance across the line which divides the Seen from the Unseen, the Known from the Infinite.”
He took a long draught of champagne. Tavernake gazed at him in blank amazement.
“I don't know much about science,” he said. “It is only lately that I have begun to realize how ignorant I really am. Your daughter has helped to teach me.”
The professor sighed heavily.
“A young woman of attainments, sir,” he remarked, “of character, too. Look at the way she carries her head. That was a trick of her mother's.”
“Don't you mean to speak to her at all, then?” Tavernake asked.
“I dare not,” the professor replied. “I am naturally of a truthful disposition, and if Elizabeth were to ask me if I had spoken to her sister, I should give myself away at once. No, I look on and that is all.”
Tavernake drummed with his fingers upon the tablecloth. Something in the merriment of that little party downstairs had filled him with a very bitter feeling.
“You ought to go and claim her, professor,” he declared. “Look down at them now. Is that the best life for a girl? The men are almost strangers to her, and the girls are not fit for her to associate with. She has no friends, no relatives. Your daughter Elizabeth can do without you very well. She is strong enough to take care of herself.”
“But my dear sir,” the professor objected, “Beatrice could not support me.”
Tavernake paid his bill without another word. Downstairs the lights had been lowered, the party at the round table were already upon their feet.
“Good-night, professor!” he said. “I am going to see the last of Beatrice from the top of the stairs.”
The professor followed him—they stood there and watched her depart with Annie Legarde. The two girls got into a taxicab together, and Tavernake breathed a sigh of relief, a relief for which he was wholly unable to account, when he saw that Grier made no effort to follow them. As soon as the taxi had rolled away, they descended and passed into the street. Then the professor suddenly changed his tone.
“Mr. Tavernake,” he said, “I know what you are thinking about me: I am a weak old man who drinks too much and who wasn't born altogether honest. I can't give up anything. I'd be happier, really happier, on a crust with Beatrice, but I daren't, I simply daren't try it. I prefer the flesh pots with Elizabeth, and you despise me for it. I don't blame you, Mr. Tavernake, but listen.”
“Well?” Tavernake interjected.
The professor's fingers gripped his arm.
“You've known Beatrice longer—you don't know Elizabeth very well, but let me tell you this. Elizabeth is a very wonderful person. I know something about character, I know something about those hidden powers which men and women possess—strange powers which no one can understand, powers which drag a man to a woman's feet, or which make him shiver when he passes another even in a crowd. You see, these things are a science with me, Mr. Tavernake, but I don't pretend to understand everything. All I know is that Elizabeth is one of those people who can just do what she likes with men. I am her father and I am her slave. I tell myself that I would rather be with Beatrice, and I am as powerless to go as though I were bound with chains. You are a young ignorant man, Mr. Tavernake, you know nothing of life, and I will give you a word of warning. It is better for you that you keep away from over there.”
He raised one hand and pointed across the street towards the Milan Court; with the other he once more gripped Tavernake's arm.
“Why she should take the trouble even to speak with you for a moment, I do not know,” the professor continued, “but she does. It has pleased her to talk with you—why I can't imagine—only if I were you I would get away while there is yet time. She is my daughter but she has no heart, no pity. I saw her smile at you. I am sorry always for the man she smiles upon like that. Goodnight, Mr. Tavernake!”
The professor crossed the street. Tavernake watched him until he was out of sight. Then he felt an arm thrust through his.
“Why, this is what I call luck!” a familiar voice exclaimed. “Mr. Tavernake, you're the very man I was looking for!”